2010 Awards for Excellence

Citation

(2010), "2010 Awards for Excellence", Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, Vol. 8 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/jices.2010.36408daa.001

2010 Awards for Excellence

Article Type: Awards for Excellence From: Journal of Information, Communication & Ethics in Society, Volume 8, Issue 4

Outstanding paper for Journal of Information, Communication & Ethics in Society

"Are socially exclusive values embedded in the avatar creation interfaces of MMORPGs?"

Tyler Pace and Aaron HoussianSchool of Informatics, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA, and

Victoria McArthurInterdisciplinary Studies Program, York University, Toronto, Canada

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show how both the presentation and limitation of visual choices in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) avatar creation interfaces tends to exclude or favor different real life social groups.Design/methodology/approach – A novel method combining both quantitative and critical analysis of the syntagmatic-paradigmatic structure of MMORPG avatar creation interfaces is used to inform the findings of this study.Findings – This study concludes that as cultural interfaces, current fantasy themed MMORPGs remediate socially exclusive values both from fantasy literature and from their own game lore. The socially exclusive values deal largely with extreme and immutable racial and sexual dimorphism.Research limitations/implications – Interfaces which present users with color palettes and/or smooth slider-based body modifiers do not lend themselves well to this method of analysis. In addition to this, only a handful of the popular MMORPGs are analyzed within the body of this work.Practical implications – This paper demonstrates that MMORPG players and designers need to be more aware about how they are constructing and embedding social values in their worlds. Avatars are critical conduits for online social dynamics and embedding socially exclusive values may transfer negative ideologies from old media to new.Originality/value – This paper offers one of the earliest critiques of embedded values in avatar creation interfaces of MMORPGs. The paper aims to begin discussion on an overlooked area of now popular media that has not received any critical attention regarding its embedded messages of social inclusiveness or exclusiveness.

Keywords Computer graphic equipment, Intergroup relations, Role play, Sociall dynamics, User studies

www.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/14779960910955909

This article originally appeared in Volume 7 Numbers 2 & 3, 2009 pp. 192-210 of Journal of Information, Communication & Ethics in Society, Editors: Dr N Ben Fairweather and Professor Simon Rogerson